Sept. 8-9, 2008 - International Oak Society

THE NEWSLETTER OF THE INTE RNATI O NAL O AK SOCIETY, VOLUME
Bu~ Oak Can.yon
Symposium
Scheduled for
Sept. 8-9, 2008
·welcome! This event will be an exciting twoday symposium that will feature one day in the
classroom, an &\rerling cook-out, and will conclude with a
field trip to Bur Oak Canyon on day two. The classes will
be held on the campus of McCook Community College
in McCook N~braska. Monday morning will consist of a
pre-workshop and a dissection lab* conducted by Jack
Phillips - who studied at the feet, and was a close friend,
of the late Dr. Alex Shigo.
The people who will be making presentations during the
classroom portion include:
Guy Sternberg, a founding life member, past president,
and journal editor for the International Oak Society, on
"The Majesty and Diversity of Bur Oak."
Tim Buchanan, Ft. Collins Colorado city forester and
International Oak Society member, will be making a
presentation on the "T)leories of Past Oak Migration
and Hybridization in the Central High Plains and Rocky
Mountain Regions."
Jim Goeke is a hydrogeologist with the University of
Nebraska. Jim is a tree; steward who will explain to us
what we are looking at when we see Bur Oak Canyon.
How was the canyon ..formed? Where does the water come
from that we see in the canyon springs? How were these
millions ofyears-old caliche outcroppings formed? Jj;n
Goeke has the answers.
Nancy Carlson has a degree in Anthropology/
Archaeology and has spent her entire adult life studying
the Native Americans of the plains ofNebraska and
surrounding regions. Nancy will present to us the Native
American Presence in the Bur Oak Canyon Area and
Continued on page 5, col. I
'
12,
N o s.
1-2,
SUMMER
2008
WANTED!
Candidates for
the 2009 Board Elections
M
embers of the International Oak Society are fortunate to be invited to the beautiful Mexican city
of Puebla for our Sixth Trien~ial Conference, to be held
October 20-22, 2009. Every three years the entire Board
of Directors is newly selected, by the general membership,
so during the months prior to the conference we will conduct the Board election by mail.
The Election Committee is therefore now asking members to consider- -and submit the names of- potential
candidates for the Board. The Society seeks to have an
active Board made up of individuals that represent the
international character and the diverse interests and skills
of the membership. Because we have no paid staff, the
volunteer Board and its committees perform all duties
required for proper functioning of the organization. Candidates for Board positions should be members in good
standing with the desire to serve the Society by working
with others toward furthering our common goal of appreciation and preservation of the genus Quercus and its
ecosystems.
Since its birth in 1992, the lntemation~l Oak Society
has grown and flourished under the leadership, vision,
and hard work of a few individuals. Their determination
and passion has brought us to where we are today and
new Board members, equally dedicated, are needed to
ensure the bright future of the International Oak Society.
Several key functions- specifically those of Membership Director and Inventory Management - that have been
fulfilled by the same individuals for many years now, will
be vacant: So- more than ever, the Society needs you!
If you are seriously prepared to devote some of your time
and energy and want to do so by serving as a Director,
or if you know someone who would like the opportunity
to make this contribution, please contact any Board member or the Election Committee. Candidates are asked
to send a brief resume along with a letter of intention
explaining why they would like to be a Board member
and in what areas they would like to contribute. Future
lines of development for the International ak ociety
include promoting information sent .in by members to the
new website (see article in this issue, page 3), increasing
Continued 011 page 3, col. I
- - - - - - - - - - - od:i"Veter.s@
Oak Images
Wanted
,~()""-.c.
:i~'--
105 Pai ~C:o ntact
n the coming issue of International
Oaks we would like to include
another oak image gallery, this
time featuring a prominent Asian
oak species. We currently are
considering Quercus dentata, but
we would reconsider if we receive
a good collection of photos and
illustrations of a different (and well
known) Asian species. Please send
all images to Guy Sternberg at~
StarhillForest.com or, if large files
(on CD), duplicate transparencies,
or prints, via postal mail to Starhill
Forest Arboretum, 12000 Boy Scout
Trail, Petersburg, Illinois 62675,
before October 2008. Please review
any recent issue to see the type and
range of illustrations needed. Help us
share your view of oaks worldwide!
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Call for free sam plea
800-284-0390
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lVtJtu-----------
. .
Membership Renewals or
Applications:
Richard J. Jensen
Department of Biology
Saint Mary's [.:ollege.
Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA
Tel: 574-284-4674
Fax: 574-284-4716
E-mail: [email protected]
Submittals for the Newsletter:
Doug McCreary, Chair
Newsletter Editorial Committee
8279 Scott Forbes Road
Browns Valley, CA 95918 USA
Tel: 530-639-8807
Fax: 530-639-2419
E-mail:
mccreary@ nature .berkeley. edu
Submittals for Journal:
Guy Sternberg, Co-chair
Journal Editorial Committee
Starhill Forest Arboretum
12000 Boy Scout Trail
Petersburg, IL 62675 USA
Tel: 217-632-3685
E-maU: [email protected]
Ron Lance, Co-chair
Chimney Rock Park Nursery
P.O. Bbx 39
Chimn~y Rock, NC 28720 USA
Tel: 828-265-4039
Fax: 828-265-9610
E-mail:' ronwlance @charter.net
European Contact:
Eike Jablonski
No. 6a, L-9456 Hoesdorf
LUXEMBOURG
Tel: 352-836297
Fax: 352-816481
E-mail:
eike .Jablonski@ education.lu
od:Nao:s@ Nutu
I
The Newsletter of the International Oak Society
8279 Scott Forbes Road
Browns Valley, CA 95918 USA
•
President: Allen Coombes Vice-President: Guy Sternberg
Treasurer: William Hess Newsletter Editor: Doug McCreary
Journal Editors: Guy Sternberg and Ron Lance
- - - - - - - - - - - - oa£1'1etw @ M t e 6 - - - - - - - - - - - Continued from page 1, col. 2
WantedCandidates
membership, developing fund-raising campaigns to help with Quercus
research and conservation efforts
around the world, and more. Candidates with placement, institutional
support, or skills that can contribute
to specific administrative functions
are especially encouraged to apply.
We look forward to receiving suggestions that will maintain the quality
of the Society as an organisation. It
-should be noted that many individuals contribute greatly to the Society
wlthout being Board members: Rudy
· ,Light, for example, who managed the
triennial Board elections for many
years and his "replacement" Diana
Gardener, who took over in 2006,
or those who organise the triennial
conferences, such as David Richardson, the most recent example, for
the Texas 2006 Conference. Active
participation in the life of the Society
C.an be in many forms. New ideas are
welcome -- just let us know what
your vision of the Society is!
Given the great distances that usually separate Board members, candidates need to have an e-mail address
and be willing to communicate in this
way. Correspondence regarding candidates and the election should be
sent to any Board member (contact
information can be found in your
Membership Directory or on the web
site), or to Diana Gar~ener:
I
New Web Site to Be On Line Soon
urrently being tested in its pilot
form by Board members- with
lots of assistance and input from lOS
member and IT specialist, Charles
Snyers (Belgium) -the new International Oak Society web site (http://intemationaloaksociet:r.org) will soon
be on-line. Many thanks are due to
Richard Jensen who has been responsible for the creation and maintenance
of the original lOS site as webmaster
for many years.
C
Built on the principle of a "community of users", the new site will
offer many exciting possibilities for
members to contribute directly information on their Quercus collections,
seeds/plants available for exchange,
news items, events announcements,
etc ... as well as be able to ask questions about cultivation, propagation
and any other Quercus-related matters that our experts can answer. The
aim of the new web site is not simply
to have a new web site but rather to
bring the membership closer together
and to fadlitate information collection to help advance many of the
basic goals of the International Oak
Society. No longer dependent on one
person acting as webmaster, the site
will be rich and dynamic to the extent
that members are willing to share
their knowledge and experience.
simply click on this "product" which
appears as a choice in the "Becoming
a Member" procedure. No payment
will be required of you until your current membership expires, at which
time you will automatically receive
an e-mail (or postal message if you
prefer) informing you of the renewal
date. New members simply choose
the membership subscription they desire fro~ the choices which appear in
the "Becoming a Member" procedure
and are then required to pay their
membership fee. The web site does
not include an electronic payment
system, so payment must still be sent
to the Membership Director, who,
upon receiving it, will validate the
new account.
If you have an e-mail address but do
not like communicating in this way,
you can indicate this when you create
your account and will then continue
receiving correspondence from the
Society through regular postal mail.
If you do not have an e-mail address,
but would like to have access to the
have to do is
web site, all you
contact the Membership Director who
can then easily create a "phantom" email address for you (in other words,
an e-mail address which only exists
for the purposes of registering you on
the website).
,..m
Continued on page 4, col. 2
four first step to assess the site: If
you are a paid-up
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For example, if you
have subscribed a
two-year membership
which expires on 31
www.h<.~rric~ thlum.c:om Covington, Louisiana USA
December 2008, you
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Diana Gardener, Election Committee
Chairperson
P.O. Box 284
'··
Silverton, Gregon 97381
USA
e-mail:
[email protected]
Thank you!
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-
A0tu--------------------------The End of an Era
---------------------------()aA(Afe,ro~'
Sixth International
Oak Society
Conference
20-22 October, 2009
Puebla Mexico
FIRST CIRCULAR
ear members and oak lovers: We are delighted to
announce that the Herbarium and Botanical Garden
at Puebla University in Puebla Mexico will be hosting
the 61h Triennial International Oak Society Conference in
late October, 200~.
D
The Conference will last 3 days during which there"will
be a wide variety of presentations and posters, as we lias
cultural and outdoor activities. If you are thinRing about
presenting a paper or poster, please let me know.
Two field trips are being planned in order to show attendees the diversity of oaks in Mexico The pre-confer-,
ence tour is being planned for 2 days to the South of.
Mexico and the post-conference tour will be in the central part ofMexico. There is no shortage of things to see
as Mexico is home to over 140 Quercus species.
T
he Amerindian Trail Marker Tree, a Quercus
alba near Athens, Illinois, fell in a storm this
spring. Many Oak Society members have seen this
tree, and even climbed it, during visits to Illinois
,, wit}) Guy Sternberg. It had been core dated to about
I 730 and was the last known trail tree in Illinois. A
prop had been installed two years ago to protect it
from ice loading, but a seyere cross wind twisted it
over sideways to the South.
Attempts are being made ~o graft it from scion wood
harvested the week the tree fell, while it was still
dormant. If one of the grafts succeeds, it will be
planted near the Trail Tree and, once tall enough,
bent in the same direction to replicate the original.
In addition, the broken stump was fenced by the
owner to exclude deer and livestock for the unlikely possibility that it will send up a sprout. Guy
Sternberg has harvested part of one limb for use in
making future Oak Society award plaques and commemorative pieces for the owner's family, and has
taken a few small wood samples for study. A piece
also has been set aside for ceremonial use by Native
Americans. The rest of the tree will be left in place,
to be viewed as a fallen relic of hi;tory.
~,
We invite you to send your pre-registration form, so
we can have an idea how many of you are interested in
visiting the country with the most oaks species in the
world! The link to fill the form will be posted in the International Oak Society website.
We are looking for sponsors for the Conference. If you
wish to assist us, please contact me at macosta@siu.
buap.mx or herbario.jardinbotanico@mail. buap.mx
! ...
Maricela Rodriguez-Coombes .
Conference Chair
Continued from page 3, col. 2
New /OS Web Site
Once you have thus registered, you will have access to
all services and tools on the site (whereas visitors who
are not paid members of the lOS have only limited access and cannot input any information).
If you are particularly interested in helping to develop
the site to its maximum potential - inputting information
and encouraging others to do so- please contact Beatrice Chasse, [email protected]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - Ort£iVcrer._r
Continued from page 1, col. I
Bur Oak Canyon Symposium
explain to us the relationship that the Native Americans
had with the oak, and what importance this canyon
played in their lives.
Justin Evertson from the Nebraska Statewide
Arboretum will talk about the selection, preservation,
and growing of oaks on the high plains
Common Scents Greenhouse & Nursery will host a
cookout in the evening to finish off the first day. It will
be casual, and all of the presenters will be available to
answer any questions that they might not have had time
for in the classroom.
. Tuesday morning, we will assemble for the field trip
portion of the symposium. We will follow the Driftwood
Creek some thirty miles to Bur Oak Canyon, where
we wiJl experien~e the beauty of short grass prairie,
amazing vistas, and the canyon that seemingly appears
out of nowhere. Once at the canyon, we will review a
dendrochronology report on a tree from this site. These
relicts are believed to be of a stand that is at least a
thousand years old. We will finish with an informal
wrap-up session at the canyon, and once again be able to
ask our presenters to explain just what we are looking at
and what the canyon provided for the Native Americans.
.Please check the homepage (http://buroakcanyon.com)
;for registration fees and further details.
Any money that might be considered profit from this
event will be given to the owners of Bur Oak Canyon,
the Lewis Family, to help with regeneration efforts.
~'II'
fltlc· Stusws
President
2290 S,E. Kiger Island Dr.
Corvallis, OR 97333-9425 USA
(800) 553·5331
(541) 757-7798
(541) 754-6617 FAX
www.stuewe.com
e-mail: [email protected]
(~ Mtt~~--------------
Proceedings of the
Third Sudden Oak
Death Science
Symposium Available
,. p·
roceedings of a 2007 SOD Science Symposium can
be downloaded for free from the following website:
http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/
psw gtr214/. It can also be ordered from the USDA
Forest Service. To request~ book or CD, email your full
mailing address in block form and note if you want a
book, CD, or both to [email protected]. You can also
mail the information to RicR.ard Schneider, Publishing
Services, Rocky Mountain Research Center, 240 West
Prospect Road, Fort Collins, CO 80526-2098, USA.
There is a limit of one book and one CD per person (no
chtirge).
This Symposium provided a forum for current research
on sudden oak death caused by the exotic, quarantine
pathogen, Phytophthora ramorum. One hundred and
seventeen paper and poster submissions describing the
following topics are included: biology, genetics, nursery
and wildland management, monitoring, ecology, and
diagnostics .
Financial support for this publication was provided
by: USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research
Station
~'41' '
Errata: lOS Journal
·spring 2008
The photograph of the unusual bark formation on
page 57 oflOS Journal #19 entitled 'The true face of
Quercus gilva' is, in fact, of the bark of Quercus hon.dae,
thus it should read 'The true face of Quercu hondae '. A
few of the photo credits were transposed also: The photo
described above was taken by me, but the photograph
on page 53 and the lower photograph on page 60, both
entitled 'Quercus serrata ssp. mongolicoides', were
taken by Anke Mattern.
Shaun Haddock
~----------~~------------
---------------------------- CJa~~ff.f ((0 A0t~ ----------------------------
Saving Quercus sichourensis (Hu) C.C.
Huang & Y. T. Chang*
C
onservation efforts financed by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China to help save Quercus
sichourensis- considered to be Critically Endangered
since the publication of the Red List of Oaks (Oldfield
and Eastwood, Fauna and Flora International, Cambridge, UK, 2008)- have now received additional support in the form of an International Oak Society grant
of $1,000 plus $3,300 raised through private donations.
Three Society members (Diana Gardener, OR; Caroline
Brown, CA; and Beatrice Chasse, FRANCE) plus one
non-member (Alison Ramsdale, UK), are the contributors to this very successful fund-raising campaign.
Quercus sichourensis, belonging to the subgenus Cyclobalanopsis, is endemic to China and was first described
in 1951. It is thought tha~ only 5 individuals of this
species are l~;ftln three localities irt the wild. A very
important part _of the conservation programme, run by
Internationa(Oak Society member Dr. Zhou Zhe-kun
at the Kunmin~ Institute of Botany, will be extensive
field research, especially in southeast Yunnan and west
Guizhou, to determine if this figure is correct. Research
on the physiology and ecology of seeds and seedlings,
plus the reintrod\lction of seedlings in an attempt to
re-establish the species in the wild, are additional ma:jor goals ofthis programme.
able locations for reintroduction. ", says Dr. Zhe-kun,
who adds, "According to local residents who know these
trees, acorn production is abundant but no seedlings are
found. Indeed, laboratory tests have shown that 80%
of the acorns germinate -.so we need to determine why
,· they are not growing naturally. "
Future work will also include in situ conservation, introduction of the species to-arboreta, and strengthening
public awareness of the neeo to conserve both Quercus
sichourensis and its habitat.
* Treated as Cyclobalanopsis sichourensis Hu in the
Flora ofChina.
Description
Height : 30-40 m
Bark : grey, peels off in strips
Leaf: evergreen, oblong, 12-24 em long, 5-1 em wi.de,
entire or with teeth near the apex, yellowish ~r brown
tomentum on underside of leaf with jelly-fish like trichomes (observable under a microscope)
Acorn: 4-8 em in diameter, 2.4-3.5 em in height
Cap : fully encloses the acorn
"Many of the seeds
we collected last year
have germinated and
are doing well. We will
attempt to introduce
these back into the
wild this year. We are
grateful for these new
funds from the International Oak Society
and private donors . .
They will be-used to finance this plus the field
work we are planning
in order to evaluate
precisely the state of
the wild populations
and to determine suit-
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